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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><font color="#004987" face="verdana, arial, trebuchet MS" size="3"><b><u>Frank I. Michelman's <i>Brennan and Democracy</i></u></b></font><br /><br /><br /><font color="darkred" face="verdana, arial, trebuchet MS" size="2"><b>01.03.00</b></font><font color="black" face="verdana, arial, trebuchet MS" size="2"> | reviewed by Jeremy Derfner</font><br /></p>
<p>Frank I. Michelman is a political theorist with a problem. He believes in democracy-all the people deciding for themselves how they will be governed. He also believes in the Consti tution, a 200-year-old document that sets down the fundamental rules of governance, "a law of law making," as Michelman puts it. But how can he believe in both? How can he reconcile "the paradox of constitutional democracy," whereby a democratic society puts so much faith in its foundational principles, which are for the most part removed from the democratic political process? To compound his problem, Michelman also has boundless respect for former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who for 30 years brought his moral sensibili ties to bear on the Constitution and came to personify the "activist" judge. Now Michelman's democracy is bound by what one man says about one document that nobody alive today has had any part in drafting. All of which leads Michel man to the central question of his book: "Brennan and democracy-how to have both?"</p>
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<p>Michelman, who served as Brennan's clerk during the 1961-- 62 term of the Supreme Court and is now a pro fessor at Harvard Law School, deals with the theoretical conundrum in the first chapter of his extended essay and with Brennan himself in the second. To frame the discussion of how demo cracy is or is not carried out in our society, Michelman draws upon two leading constitutional scholars, Ronald Dworkin of the "democracy-as-rights" school and Robert Post of the "democracy-as-procedure" school. Dworkin argues that the laws governing a society can have some intrinsic democratic character, no matter who came up with them, how, or why. Laws upholding far-reaching enfranchisement are by nature democratic laws, in Dworkin's view. Post maintains that democracy is alive and well in a public discourse that seeps into the conduct of those who govern, a discourse that ideally would be equally available to all Americans. Michelman picks apart both Dworkin and Post (not before using their ideas to advance a productive discussion of his problem) and eventually gives his own answer. It is an honest one if somewhat unsatisfying: Michelman believes that the paradox will always exist no matter how hard we try to will it away. But our struggling with constitutional democracy will prove to us that if it is a less than perfect system, it is the best one we have. Some paradoxes are just paradoxes. </p>
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<p>The second chapter of Bren nan and Democracy takes up Brennan's judicial philosophy in some detail. Michelman examines several landmark decisions (Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Cruzan v. Direc tor, Missouri Department of Health) and tries to place Brennan on the heavily traveled continuum anchored at one end by individual rights and at the other by community rights. Michelman concludes that Brennan believed absolutely in the dignity of individual human beings and in the power of the government to make itself an activist on behalf of individual liberty-again, that paradox. The book ends on a personal note as the author recounts a Justice Brennan anecdote. Michelman's admiration for Brennan shines throughout the book and even humanizes the constitutional theory from time to time. </p>
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<p>One reviewer wrote that Michelman went about his writing with "mischief" and "an unpretentious prose style." Attributing mischief to Michelman might be going too far, but the book can be funny, especially if you delve into the extensive footnotes. And the style is straightforward-which is not to say it is an easy read. This is a theoretical book. But if you can summon both the intellectual fortitude and the inclination to start from square one and grapple with fundamental flaws in a system we tend to work rather happily in, then Brennan and Democracy is good exercise.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 21:08:22 +0000142137 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerPhoto Finisheshttp://prospect.org/article/photo-finishes
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<p></p><p><font size="+2" color="darkred"><b> I</b></font>n <b> California</b>'s 27th district, in suburban Los Angeles, Republican incumbent James Rogan is especially vulnerable this year because he acted as House prosecutor during President Clinton's impeachment trial. But his seat was never very secure to start with. Although Rogan has won two terms (his last with only 51 percent of the vote), his district is 45 percent Democrat and only 37 percent Republican by registration. Rogan's challenger, state senator Adam Schiff, is respected and has raised $1.5 million. Rogan has raised $3.3 million in what is shaping up to be the most expensive House race in history. In the open California primaries held in early March, Schiff narrowly outpolled Rogan.</p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> James Rogan</b></p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Rogan 51%, Democrat 46%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 49%, Dole 41%, Perot 7%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 44%, Bush 36%, Perot 19%</p>
<p>fundraising as of 12/31/99: Rogan $3,331,079, Schiff $1,459,338</p>
<p>cash on hand as of 12/31/99: Rogan $758,804, Schiff $710,007</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> Michigan</b>'s eighth district (Lansing) is a classic swing district. Democrat Debbie Stabenow has held it since 1996, but she is leaving the House to run against Senator Spencer Abraham. A Republican represented the district before Stabenow, and historically candidates have won it by extremely narrow margins. Both parties have strong candidates: Democratic state senator Dianne Byrum versus GOP state senate majority floor leader Mike Rogers. The race is considered such a toss-up and so critical that House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt was in Lansing campaigning for Byrum 10 months before the election. The key issue in the campaign looks to be education. Byrum has the endorsement of the Michigan Federation of Teachers; Rogers is a champion of charter schools. Byrum has been leading in polls, but more than a quarter of voters--the swing of the swing district--are still undecided. </p>
<p>INCUMBENT: <b> Open</b> (Democrat)</p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Stabenow 57%, Republican 39%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 49%, Dole 40%, Perot 9%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 40%, Dole 36%, Perot 23%</p>
<p>fundraising: Byrum $543,513, Rogers $672,959</p>
<p>cash on hand: Byrum $392,413, Rogers $605,139</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> Kentucky'</b>s Lexington-based sixth district features a rematch of 1996, but this time around the former incumbent is the challenger. In 1996 Democrat Scotty Baesler beat Ernie Fletcher handily, but in 1998 Baesler ran for Senate (he eventually lost to Jim Bunning by a single point), and Fletcher won the open seat. Now Baesler is trying to win it back. Health care will be an important issue in the campaign. Fletcher, a doctor, has been widely criticized for voting against an American Medical Associationsupported patient protection plan last October, and Baesler will continue to make an issue of it. Baesler will also campaign as a friend to small tobacco farmers, who, unlike Fletcher, will refuse to accept contributions from tobacco manufacturers who cut quotas on local farmers. Fletcher has responded by accusing Baesler of "trying to turn manufacturers into a scapegoat when the blame for tobacco troubles" should go to the Clinton administration.</p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT:<b> Ernie Fletcher</b></p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Fletcher 53%, Democrat 46%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 46%, Dole 45%, Perot 8%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Bush 42%, Clinton 41%, Perot 16%</p>
<p>fundraising: Baesler $520,412, Fletcher $849,594</p>
<p>cash on hand: Baesler $478,795,<br />
Fletcher $727,876</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p>When Republican Tom Coburn won in <b> Oklahoma</b>'s second district (in the northeastern corner of the state) in 1994, he was the first Republican to hold the seat in more than 70 years. Coburn was easily re-elected twice, but he is limiting himself to three terms, and the open seat could go Democratic again. The Democrats have two candidates in the primary, an untested but highly regarded lawyer named Brad Carson and state representative Bill Settle. The Republican field is much more crowded, with five candidates. Although car dealer Andy Ewing has been endorsed by Coburn and is the clear favorite, there will almost certainly be a runoff, and the winner will have only six weeks to concentrate on the general election. The Republicans are hoping Coburn's overwhelming popularity carries over to their nominee, but the Democrats believe Coburn's election in 1994 was a combination of bad luck and bad circumstances, and expect the still Democratic district with a potentially debilitating Republican primary to again deliver a Democrat. </p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> Open</b> (Republican)</p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Coburn 58%, Democrat 40%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 47%, Dole 40%, Perot 13%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 42%, Bush 36%, Perot 22%</p>
<p>fundraising: Carson $220,607,<br />
Ewing $250,746,<br />
Settle $168,503</p>
<p>cash on hand: Carson $175,247, Ewing $175,037, Settle $151,599</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> Utah</b>'s second district, Salt Lake City, leans Republican with the rest of Utah, but Republican incumbent Merrill Cook has earned such a bad reputation in the past few years that he is extremely vulnerable nonetheless. Shortly after Cook was re-elected in 1998, he fired two staffers; afterward, one wrote the staff that "Merrill has taken up permanent residence in wackoland," and the other told a newspaper that "the guy has a grenade in his mouth and is going to pull the pin." Cook has also twice been accused of ramming his car into other cars, including his daughter's boyfriend's car. But Cook still has the support of the Republican establishment in Washington, which should help him win the primary against several young and untested opponents (the most promising of which is venture capitalist Jeff Wright). The general election will be another matter. The Democratic recruit, Jim Matheson, son of former Governor Scott Matheson, is considered a strong candidate, and he has led Cook by as many as 17 points in the polls.</p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> Merrill Cook</b></p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Cook 53%, Democrat 43%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Dole 47%, Clinton 41%, Perot 8%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Bush 38%, Clinton 31%, Perot 29%</p>
<p>fundraising: Cook $388,125, Matheson $230,371, Wright $251,353</p>
<p>cash on hand: Cook $223,227, Matheson $200,314, Wright $219,643</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> California</b>'s 36th district, which includes many Los Angeles-area beaches, is a classic swing district. Moderate Republican Steve Kuykendall won the seat in 1998 with only 49 percent of the vote, and this year former gubernatorial candidate and Representative Jane Harman is contesting it. Because Kuykendall expected a strong challenge no matter who the Democrats put up, he has been raising money for his reelection ever since he was elected the first time and will be well-financed. Harman's personal wealth will make her financially competitive as well. In the March primaries, Harman was very narrowly outpolled by Kuykendall, but most observers say she had yet to start campaigning in earnest. </p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> Steve Kuykendall</b></p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Kuykendall 49%, Democrat 47%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 47%, Dole 41%, Perot 8%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 41%, Bush 35%, Perot 23%</p>
<p>fundraising: Harman $441,030, Kuykendall $537,139</p>
<p>cash on hand: Harman $392,435, Kuykendall $222,641</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> Virginia</b>'s second district, which includes Norfolk and Virginia Beach, has been held by conservative Democrat Owen Pickett since 1986. But the district has been trending Republican in recent years, and Republican state senator Ed Schrock announced in November that he would enter the race against Pickett. It looked like Pickett would have to run the first close race of his career, but in December he announced he would not run again, and an unprepared Democratic Party scrambled to find another candidate. It had a difficult time doing so. The two best possible candidates declined to run. The conventional wisdom in Virginia is that Pickett's hold on the district was anomalous and that the Republicans will almost certainly take it now that he is retiring. One of the would-be candidates who eventually opted not to run told a reporter, "I have little or no interest in just being a torch-bearer for the Democratic ticket, to say, 'Gee, I ran for Congress and got my clock cleaned.'" Another problem for a Democratic candidate is that with a Republican state legislature in Virginia, the district will most likely become even more Republican after redistricting in 2002, so any Democrat who happened to win this year would have an even harder time getting re-elected. The Democrats finally recruited an unknown lawyer from Virginia Beach named Jody Wagner.</p>
<p></p><p>Incumbent: <b> Open</b> (Democrat)</p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Pickett unopposed</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Dole 48%, Clinton 45%, Perot 7%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Bush 47%, Clinton 36%, Perot 17%</p>
<p>fundraising: Schrock $114,430</p>
<p>cash on hand: Schrock $109,832</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p>Four-term Democrat Ron Klink is giving up his seat in western <b> Pennsylvania</b>'s fourth district to run for Senate. The blue-collar district should vote solidly Democratic, but the Republican candidate, state senator Melissa Hart, is very respected and has a clear primary advantage, whereas eight Democrats are competing for their party's nomination (the favorites are Lawrence County District Attorney Matthew Mangino, who has the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's endorsement, and state representative Terry Van Horne, who has the <i>Pittsburgh Post Gazette</i>'s endorsement). If Hart runs a strong campaign and the Democratic primary is brutal and costly, then Republicans think she can slip through. </p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT:<b> Open</b> (Democrat)</p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Klink 64%, Republican 36%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 47%, Dole 42%, Perot 10%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 48%, Bush 31%, Perot 21%</p>
<p>fundraising: Hart $335,481, Mangino $139,755, Van Horne $44,755</p>
<p>cash on hand: Hart $241,733, Mangino $103,970, Van Horne $16,860</p>
<hr size="1" /><p>In <b> Pennsylvania</b>'s 13th district, in suburban Philadelphia, freshman Democrat Joe Hoeffel should face a tough challenge from state senator Stewart Greenleaf. Although Hoeffel has a two-to-one fundraising edge and the district has been trending Democratic in recent years, it is still a strong Republican district. Many observers believe Hoeffel won two years ago only because his opponent was especially weak. But in recent weeks, Greenleaf's qualifications have been called into question as his campaign has been slow to get off the ground.</p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> Joe Hoeffel</b></p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> Hoeffel 52%, Republican 47%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Clinton 50%, Dole 41%, Perot 8%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Clinton 44%, Bush 39%, Perot 16%</p>
<p>fundraising: Greenleaf $280,028, Hoeffel $578,293</p>
<p>cash on hand: Greenleaf $200,173, Hoeffel $418,516</p>
<p></p><hr size="1" /><p><b> Florida</b>'s Orlando-based eighth district has been Republican Bill McCollum's for 20 years. Even with McCollum stepping aside for a Senate run, a district that voted for George Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996 should be counted on to deliver another Republican. But the party has not been able to recruit a strong candidate, and the Democrats have well-known former Orange County Chairwoman Linda Chapin running. Chapin has raised almost as much as the three Republican candidates combined, and the leading Republican, state representative Bill Sublette, has fallen well-short of his fundraising goals. If Chapin can run effectively to the center (her opponents have scored points by attacking her as a liberal for pushing a penny raise in state sales tax in 1997), she may be able to steal the seat against inferior Republican competition.</p>
<p></p><p>INCUMBENT: <b> Open</b> (Republican)</p>
<p><b> 1998:</b> McCollum 66%, Democrat 34%</p>
<p><b> 1996:</b> Dole 47%, Clinton 44%, Perot 9%</p>
<p><b> 1992:</b> Bush 48%, Clinton 32%, Perot 20%</p>
<p>fundraising: Chapin $391,334, Sublette $209,079</p>
<p>cash on hand: Chapin $294,949, Sublette $160,158 &amp;curren</p>
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<hr size="1" /></center></div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:15:54 +0000140739 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerThe New Black Caucushttp://prospect.org/article/new-black-caucus
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<p></p><p><font size="+2" color="darkred"><b> C</b></font>ongressman James Clyburn has built his political career hammering out compromises behind the scenes. He has worked for economic growth in his eclectic South Carolina district, lobbying successfully for a Honda plant in Timmonsville, a significant increase in the state's share of federal highway funds, direct flights from Charleston to Chicago, and the deepening of Charleston Harbor. In Washington he has earned a reputation as a talented negotiator. "If the distance between you and the other person is five steps," Clyburn likes to say, "then you damn sure ought to be willing to take two steps." Plenty of representatives do their jobs according to the Clyburn model, but in addition to being the first black congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, Clyburn is also the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). And that makes him very different indeed. </p>
<p>The contrast between Clyburn and his immediate predecessor, the brash and outspoken Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, is perhaps the clearest indication of the changing nature of the CBC. But as a rural southerner, Clyburn also differs from other heads of the CBC--Kweisi Mfume, Donald Payne, Edolphus Towns, and Ron Dellums in the 1990s--all of whom came from urban, economically depressed, and overwhelmingly black districts outside the South.</p>
<p>The switch to a rural southerner is no accident. Before the 1992 elections that sent 17 black freshmen to Congress--most of them from newly majority-minority districts in the South--the caucus drew almost all of its membership from big cities. Now the CBC is nearly twice the size, almost half southern and half female, and significantly rural and suburban. Layered upon this demographic transformation is a generational change, an influx of younger members who learned their politics in the post-civil rights era. Together these changes have made the caucus of today quite different from the caucus of 10 years ago. </p>
<p>The tension between pragmatism and ideology is nothing new in the CBC. As far back as 1974, only three years after it was founded, St. Louis Congressman Bill Clay told his colleagues that the caucus could not be both a legislative organization and a civil rights organization. To Clay, the conclusion was evident: Members had to be legislators first. But, if only by necessity, the CBC has a long tradition of focusing on the politics of moral resistance. The caucus has cast itself as the conscience of Congress, making up for a lack of votes with claims to legislative purity. For years its primary focus was its alternative budget, ignored by the rest of Congress. The idea wasn't so much to pass a budget--or even directly affect the legislative process--as it was to articulate a vision. And to do this, black representatives had to maintain a certain ideological purity. So members of the caucus didn't want to wrestle in the political mud for two reasons: It would weaken their moral authority, and they couldn't get what they wanted anyway.</p>
<p>But with 37 members, the caucus is no longer isolated from power. During the 103rd Congress, after the caucus's expansion but before the Republican take-over, the CBC vote was pivotal on 21 pieces of legislation. If the Democrats win back the House in November, black representatives will likely chair three full committees and 19 subcommittees. Now that they are almost fully integrated into the institution of Congress, CBC members can form coalitions and leverage votes as everybody else has for years. Albert Wynn, who represents suburban Prince George's County in Maryland, is one of the new black representatives trying to swim more in the mainstream. "I didn't come here to be anybody's conscience," he said when he took office in 1993. "I came here to negotiate." Harold Ford, Jr., who took over the Memphis seat from his father in 1996, also symbolizes a new pragmatism. With statewide ambitions, he has been careful not to seem as doctrinaire as his father and has bucked the rest of the caucus on some key issues, including national education testing. According to Frank Watkins, who worked for Jesse Jackson, Sr., and is now on the staff of Jesse Jackson, Jr., the younger Jackson is more liberal than his father but is also "much softer" stylistically.</p>
<p>The changing political style of the CBC reflects a number of distinct developments: generational turnover, the increasingly moderate turn of the Democratic Party, and the larger size of the caucus. But perhaps the most important factor is the diversification of the constituencies CBC members represent--a development largely brought on by redistricting in the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Before 1992 most members of the CBC came from districts with relatively unitary political interests: economically stressed inner cities with overwhelmingly black populations. Because the interests of the Cleveland district were similar to those of the Newark district, the pre-1992 CBC was unified not only in the belief in activist government but also in the particulars of what it should be activist for. The caucus could put forward a very black- and urban-centric political agenda. But now that it encompasses a new range of demographics, there is by definition less agreement about the particulars as well as an increased need to represent districts that are more diverse. If all politics is local, then the proliferation of different kinds of local within a caucus is bound to change its politics. More than ever before, black representatives are being pulled in different directions by a multiplicity of constituent interests.</p>
<p>There is, for instance, now a bloc of about 10 southerners who vote against the rest of the caucus on agricultural legislation. Some of them, including Clyburn and North Carolina's Eva Clayton, are even outspoken defenders of tobacco farmers--something that sets them apart from their colleagues who rail against the tobacco industry for questionable marketing strategies that target black neighborhoods. The black representatives from Florida and Texas are unique among CBC members in their support of the air and space industry. Bobby Scott, whose Virginia district includes parts of Newport News and Norfolk, is the leader of a 12-member pro-defense minority in the CBC. Jacksonville's Corrine Brown casts aside liberal orthodoxies when they conflict with her pro-military constituency. In her 1998 campaign, she told a constituent, "When it comes to military facilities and the safety of the United States ... we need to check our parties at the door." </p>
<p>The expansion of local interests within the CBC has similarly led to a change in the kind of committee assignments caucus members lobby for. Since 1992 black representatives have increasingly opted to serve on constituent committees that give them access to pork instead of the policy and prestige committees to which members of the CBC had heretofore tended to gravitate.</p>
<p>These interest-based divisions revealed themselves most clearly in the recent debate over the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, free trade legislation co-sponsored by Charles Rangel, the longtime congressman from Harlem. The issues were very similar to those surrounding the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle: What will free trade cost everyday Africans and Americans? Rangel and his supporters voted for the legislation because it provided new money for Africa and most African governments supported it. Maxine Waters voted against it because, she said, it would open Africa to exploitation by multinational corporations. The three-member Chicago black delegation voted against it in part because labor unions opposed it. (Jesse Jackson, Jr., proposed alternative legislation based on loan guarantees to African countries.) Seven southerners voted against it to protect textile workers in their districts. Sanford Bishop from Georgia made their case very simply during the floor debate. "Let's help workers in Africa," Bishop said. "But in so doing, let's not hurt workers in America." North Carolinians Mel Watt and Jesse Helms don't agree on much of anything, least of all their vision for the future of Africa, but they voted together in regional solidarity against a bill the CBC ended up supporting, 20-14.</p>
<p></p><p><font size="+2" color="darkred"><b> A</b></font> central element in the changing political dynamics of the CBC is the increasing importance of biracial politics and political coalitions. In his recent book <i>Race, Redistricting, and Representation</i>, University of Wisconsin Professor David T. Canon argues that contrary to the predictions of racial redistricting's critics--that it would engender "political apartheid," in Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's words--redistricting has in fact spurred the growth of "a politics of commonality" distinct from "a politics of difference." The 1992 majorityminority districts were some of the most integrated districts in the country. And after most of them were scaled back in response to the Supreme Court's <i>Shaw v. Reno</i> decision outlawing racial redistricting, they became even more integrated than before. That means many new members must appeal to a significant white constituency, something that was never a consideration for most old members. </p>
<p>Not that whites didn't ever turn elections in majority black districts in the past. White voters in black districts have sometimes decided Democratic primaries (and thus, in effect, general elections) on the basis of which black candidate has the stronger biracial appeal. For example, although Georgia's fifth district (Atlanta) is 62 percent black, when it was created in 1986 John Lewis beat Julian Bond in the Democratic primary because he won some 80 percent of the white vote. The same thing happened in Houston in 1994, where Sheila Jackson Lee defeated Craig Washington in the primary by appealing to white and women voters, something Washington had conspicuously failed to do.</p>
<p>But redistricting, and even more the re-redistricting that took place in the middle 1990s, has amplified the effect of white voters on black candidates and thus has indirectly affected the character of the Congressional Black Caucus. Several southern CBC members have had their districts redrawn so they are no longer majority-minority. Almost all these representatives, with the possible exception of Cynthia McKinney (who is strong among women voters), have reached out to white voters in one way or another. And all of them, including McKinney, have won re-election. </p>
<p>There is considerable debate over whether these victories are evidence of a new white willingness to vote for black candidates or just the power of incumbency. But the real story seems to combine both of these factors. Majority-minority districts allowed black candidates to gain the toehold of incumbency, which has in turn had a small but discernible transformative effect on white voting patterns.</p>
<p>Sanford Bishop is perhaps the most dramatic example. Bishop, who had served as student body president of Morehouse College in the late 1960s, was elected from a majority-black district in rural Georgia in 1992. When his district was redrawn with a 60 percent white majority, Bishop looked to be one of re-redistricting's most likely victims. But he moved right on a number of issues (even joining the Blue Dogs, the conservative Democrat caucus). He lobbied hard for peanut subsidies, which both his white and black constituents needed, and was instrumental in ramming them through Congress. In November 1998 he was re-elected with support from many white peanut farmers who had never considered voting for a black candidate before. As a constituent told <i>The New York Times</i>, "I just wouldn't have thought a black man would know enough to do the job."</p>
<p>The case of Mel Watt is more complex. Although Bishop had conservative leanings from the outset, Watt is one of the most outspoken civil libertarians in Congress, which ordinarily wouldn't play well in his now 63 percent white district in North Carolina. He cast the only vote in the House against Megan's Law and is strongly opposed to school prayer. But Watt, who sits on the Banking and Financial Services Committee, has vital support from Charlotte banking interests. They contribute to his campaigns, and he usually--though by no means always--votes their way. So Watt is able to make principled votes on the ideological issues he cares about because he delivers to key constituents. The partnership between Watt and the banks might seem unnatural, but if you're a black congressman and you want to stand up for civil rights and civil liberties in a 63 percent white district in North Carolina, you had better have friends like the bankers. As University of Maryland Professor of African-American Studies Ronald Walters told me, it's often a question of "what they can and cannot get away with."</p>
<p>Biracial politics is even becoming more salient in districts where it is not an electoral necessity. James Clyburn's district is 62 percent black, and he could hold onto his seat without biracial support. (Bennie Thompson has a 63 percent black district in Mississippi and is re-elected with virtually no white support, which, because the Mississippi Delta is in many ways a vestige of the Old South, will be a long time in coming no matter what kind of politics he practices.) But Clyburn works toward what he sees as the common goals of his black and white constituents by focusing on economic development. Similarly, Jesse Jackson, Jr., according to Frank Watkins, understands history in terms of race but practices politics in terms of economics. That way, says Watkins, "it doesn't come off to white people like you're just fighting for black people." But Jackson and Clyburn are also national civil rights leaders. Jackson is taking the lead on studying the digital divide. As chairman of the CBC, Clyburn has spoken out on topics ranging from environmental justice and affirmative action to the rejection of Judge Ronnie White and racial profiling. Jackson and Clyburn's dual roles as powerful constituent representatives and civil rights spokesmen could be a new model for black representatives-- because most of them are finding out you can't have one without the other.</p>
<p></p><p><font size="+2" color="darkred"><b> A</b></font>re pragmatic politics and biracial politics euphemisms for the dilution of the CBC consensus? Some argue that an ideologically muted biracial politics will keep the CBC from leading on issues that affect African Americans. The opposite argument posits that by working more within the system and with a broader constituency the CBC will be more successful on the ground. It will be easier to tell how the caucus has really changed should the Democrats retake Congress. Since 1994 party members have been unified in their opposition to the Republican majority, but if they are able to win back Congress and set the agenda, divisions within the Democratic Caucus will become clearer. </p>
<p>Most CBC members are still among the most liberal in Congress. With the exception of Sanford Bishop, Harold Ford, and Bill Livingston of New Orleans, each is on the left of the House Democratic Caucus. But there is some question whether Black Caucus members will continue to drive the agenda from the left or integrate themselves more fully into the party apparatus. And left or not, there is also the question of how members can be most effective--as members of the Black Caucus or members of the Democratic Caucus. For instance, if Charles Rangel takes the chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, will his first loyalties be with the CBC or the Democratic Party? </p>
<p>The CBC is far less tightly knit than it once was. Take John Lewis's probable candidacy for Democratic whip, should the Democrats regain control of the House this November. Given the Democrats' high hopes for taking back the House, candidates like Lewis have already started campaigning for the post among their colleagues. A few years ago, the CBC would have gone down the line for Lewis, as many of the caucus's senior members, like Michigan's John Conyers, now are. But now some members are pledging their support to other candidates. Lewis's fellow Georgian Cynthia McKinney, who says she would like to see a woman elected, has pledged her support to Nancy Pelosi, a white, liberal congresswoman from California. Albert Wynn supports his fellow Marylander Steny Hoyer, who is also white. "Bottom line is the caucus is not monolithic," Wynn said. </p>
<p>"I'm not suggesting they owe me," Lewis said recently, "but I did give a little blood on the bridge in Selma in 1965. I would hope and pray that they realize if it had not been for my own involvement to bring about the Voting Rights Act, many of them would not be in Congress today." Few would deny Lewis's claim. But for better or worse, the Congressional Black Caucus today is emblematic of a more integrated America. And wasn't that the point? ¤</p>
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<hr size="1" /></center></div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:15:53 +0000140612 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerSouthern Crosshttp://prospect.org/article/southern-cross
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>George W. Bush has ducked the question of whether South Carolina should haul down the Confederate flag. But regardless of Bush's position, the flag will likely come down, and soon. Even before the huge demonstration on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, some of South Carolina's most venerable and conservative institutions (the Citadel, Bob Jones University, the South Carolina Baptist Convention) have been lobbying to lower the flag, stimulated in part by the NAACP's call last July for a tourism boycott.&#13;</p>
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<p>Black South Carolinians, roughly 30 percent of the population, have been against the flag since it was raised by an all-white general assembly in 1962. But serious debate has begun only recently. The first public hearing took place in 1994, when the Republican-controlled house killed the Democrat-controlled senate's plan to move the flag from the capitol dome to a Confederate monument on the statehouse grounds. Two years later, Republican Governor David Beasley--tilting at the windmill of national prominence-- proposed a similar compromise on statewide television. The house killed it again, and Beasley lost his bid for re-election in 1998.&#13;</p>
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The NAACP boycott has upped the stakes dramatically. South Carolina's economy is heavily dependent on tourism. In 1997 more than two million blacks visited the state and spent $280 million; now more than 80 groups have canceled events there. But the boycott's effect on the state's prestige may be as important as lost revenue. South Carolina won't ever be at the vanguard of anything--higher education, politics, high-tech industry--until it convinces the rest of the country that it's not full of unreconstructed racists.&#13;</p>
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Jim Clyburn, the only black congressman from South Carolina and the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, has tapped into this anxiety. "South Carolina is wellpositioned to be a leader in so many ways," he told a gathering of the NAACP on Hilton Head Island in December 1999. "It makes no sense for us to continue fighting the Civil War ... or if it suits you better, the War of Northern Aggression." Clyburn is telling white South Carolinians they can be as racist as they want to be, but they have to take the flag down because it is as bad for them as it is for blacks. The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, Charleston and Hilton Head (which rely on tourism) and Greenville and Spartanburg (which rely on industry), and the University of South Carolina and the College of Charleston are now all officially on record as agreeing with Clyburn, and all of this has happened in the six months since the boycott was announced.&#13;</p>
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In Charleston a former state representative who voted to raise the flag in 1962 is helping lead the effort to take it down. George Campsen, Jr., owner of a tour company, is telling everybody who will listen that the general assembly really meant to leave the flag up for one year only, to honor the Con-federate centennial, and just forgot to take it down. Campsen even found 66 lawmakers from 1962 and got 48 of them to sign a petition asking legislators to "correct our omission by moving the flag to a place of honor on the statehouse grounds." That puts the current South Carolina General Assembly--with its comfortable pro-flag majority in the house--in the peculiar position of being less racially progressive than the Jim Crow general assembly of 1962.&#13;</p>
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The reason is simple electoral politics. Most members of the house's pro-flag majority come from bleached white districts whose voters think the boycott is blackmail and say they will never capitulate to the NAACP. Representative John Graham Altman, a leading flag supporter from Charleston, told a House Judiciary Committee meeting that "folks who feel crippled" by the flag should "quit looking at symbols, get out and get a job, quit shooting each other, and quit having illegitimate babies." Altman clearly isn't concerned about how he's perceived by the outside world, or outside his district, for that matter.&#13;</p>
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The fate of the Confederate flag now flying over the statehouse will depend largely on the state's business community. The pro-flag majority in the house is comfortable, but not overwhelming. And sooner or later (sooner, if the business community really applies some pressure), the flag is going to come down.</p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:10:47 +0000141918 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerThe 101st Senator?http://prospect.org/article/101st-senator
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<p>In 1974 Congress created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) "to provide the Congress with objective, timely, nonpartisan analyses needed for economic and budget decisions." Over the last quarter-century, members of the minority party (be they Republicans or Democrats) have sometimes raised concerns about how the CBO's numbers have been crunched. But, in general, the office has compiled an impressive record of impartiality in what is after all an inherently political institution. At least, that was the case until the Republican majority selected its fifth director of CBO, Dan Crippen. Since being appointed in February 1999, Crippen has taken it upon himself to inject his opinions into debates on every issue from Medicare to Social Security to the budget. &#13;</p>
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Crippen came to the CBO with impeccable conservative credentials. In the 1980s, he worked as chief counsel and economic policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and later moved with Baker to the Reagan White House. (Crippen became deputy assistant to the president when Baker took over as Reagan's last chief of staff.) During the 1990s, he worked for several Washington lobbying firms. &#13;</p>
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Congressional Democrats hoped that the sanctity of the CBO would keep Crippen on his best behavior, but it wasn't to be. Less than two weeks after he became director, on February 11, he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on a CBO study of Social Security in five foreign countries. He used his bully pulpit to argue for the privatization of Social Security in the United States. His written testimony concluded, "Efforts by national governments to pre-fund programs for retirement have not succeeded; pre-funding through privatization offers an opportunity to increase national saving and economic growth." (According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Crippen's conclusion did not logically follow from any of the findings actually contained in the five-country study.)&#13;</p>
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But that wouldn't be the last time Crippen's penchant for privatization got the best of him. On March 3, 1999, he wrote to Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm to explain that although he was not acquainted with the specifics of his Social Security proposal, "One result of your plan and others like it that return to individuals the right and responsibility to manage the surpluses is that the funds are saved and are invested. National saving should be increased and economic growth should be higher." &#13;</p>
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Crippen was even more encouraging to Democratic Senator John Breaux of Louisiana and his proposal to put Medicare in direct competition with private health care companies. On February 18, Crippen wrote Breaux that "the details that remain to be specified would determine the ultimate effectiveness of the proposal in slowing the growth of Medicare's costs. But the general direction of the proposal is clearly promising." Democrats (an overwhelming majority of whom opposed the Breaux proposal) were less than thrilled that Crippen would spend four pages waxing ecstatic about the advantages of competition when he had no details or estimates. Crippen seemed to see his role less as a number cruncher than as a freelance conservative policy activist weighing in on which bills he liked and which ones he didn't. As one congressional staffer put it, "He's like the 101st senator."&#13;</p>
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Crippen received several sharply worded letters after the Breaux letter was circulated. And new criticisms were leveled through the spring and summer. It wasn't just that Crippen was acting like an ideologue; he was also making a lot of mistakes. His February 23, 1999, testimony before the Ways and Means committee was not just biased--some of the data was mislabeled and some of it was just plain wrong. In mid-July, Tom Daschle and several other Democratic senators held a closed-door meeting with Crippen to express their dissatisfaction with his performance. On July 28, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and Senator Daschle wrote Crippen that "[i]n its 25-year history, the Congressional Budget Office has never produced a document so unfair and misleading" as his re-estimate of the president's budget. "We believe," the letter continued, "your actions jeopardize the productive role CBO has played since its inception." &#13;</p>
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Finally, in August, the Democratic leaders decided to play a little hardball. They excised a pay raise for Crippen from the legislative branch spending bill. And it seems to have worked. Democrats say they are now enjoying a cautious era of good feelings with the CBO. They were particularly pleased when Crippen's CBO found that the Republican budget bill busted self-imposed spending caps.&#13;</p>
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What's unclear is whether Crippen has really cleaned up his act or whether the Democrats have just momentarily cowed him. Republicans seem to think the latter and they have started to act accordingly, by applying their own pressure. Crippen eventually got his pay raise reinstated in the final year-end budget deal. But before the bill actually went to the president, two of Crippen's onetime Republican supporters, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, again tried to strip him of his pay raise because they were unhappy with a CBO report on the defense budget. It would be a shame if the CBO director's salary became a political football every time a powerful member of Congress finds some fault in one of his calculations. But then maybe that's why the CBO director isn't supposed to get involved in partisan politics in the first place.&#13;</p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:09:40 +0000140678 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerDepartment of Quixotic Endeavorshttp://prospect.org/article/department-quixotic-endeavors
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>For the record, John Anderson, the 77-year-old former Illinois congressman last seen vying for the presidency in 1980 as a third-party candidate, is not running for the Reform Party nomination this year. But that hasn't stopped his diehard supporters from creating <a href="http://www.draftanderson.org/">www.draftanderson.org</a>. </p>
<p></p><p>They're serious.</p>
<p>Indeed the campaign is moving forward with all sincerity, boasting a burgeoning ground operation (they proudly claim at least one contact in 11 of the 50 states) and a capable fundraising apparatus. Well, sort of capable. While Anderson 2000 has set itself a goal of raising $5,000 in at least 20 states in order to gain access to federal matching funds, so far it has raised a grand total of $7,400--$100 of it from Anderson's home state of Illinois and the remainder from Minnesota and New York. That's pocket change for, say, Reform candidate Donald Trump. And while the Draft Anderson movement has succeeded in getting its candidate on the Reform Party ballot in California (and nowhere else), its most tangible accomplishment to date may have been the printing of cool Draft Anderson bumper stickers. </p>
<p>Actually, if Anderson were to contend earnestly for the Reform Party nomination, he would be--largely by default--the most serious, experienced, and sensible candidate in the running. And in the Reform Party, $7,400 and some bumper stickers could go a very long way.</p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:08:07 +0000142309 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerVilify Thishttp://prospect.org/article/vilify
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<p>When Big Tobacco agreed to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in a settlement two years ago, it looked like the public interest finally had the upper hand. More than 99 percent of the $206 billion settlement went to 46 states to spend however they saw fit (some on antismoking efforts and much more on everything from debt reduction and college scholarships to road repairs and water mains). And 1 percent of the money ($1.5 billion) was earmarked for a national antismoking program run by the newly constituted American Legacy Foundation. &#13;</p>
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<p>One percent is not much, but $1.5 billion still makes it the biggest antismoking campaign ever. The question is what approach to deploy for the campaign. There is the obvious smoking-is-bad-for-you approach, but its being bad for you is a large part of what makes it a popular expression of teenage rebellion. There's the smoking-is-not-cool approach, but it's hard to reverse decades of pro-smoking advertising dedicated to the opposite notion. &#13;</p>
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Then there's what may be the most effective tactic: exposing the tobacco industry as a liar scheming to make profits at the expense of national health. John Banzhaf, the executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, says ads focusing on the manipulativeness of Big Tobacco effectively harness the teenage impulse to rebel: Rather than smoking to defy their parents, kids <i>don't</i> smoke to defy the industry. &#13;</p>
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Interestingly, the most effective tobacco control programs--in California, Florida, and Massachusetts--all attack the industry to one degree or another. The flagship ad of the California effort depicts a meeting of tobacco executives plotting to get kids hooked on their product. It ends when one of them starts coughing and laughs, "We're not in this for our health."&#13;</p>
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But the American Legacy Foundation no longer may deploy this tactic effectively because the 1998 agreement outlaws "any personal attack on, or vilification of, any person (whether by name or business affiliation), company, or government agency, whether individually or collectively." Industry spokespeople characterize the prohibition on attacks as a matter of simple decency. But the ban has had the effect of expressly forbidding promulgation of the message that has been shown to be most effective at addressing the problem. &#13;</p>
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Antismoking advocates hoped that the vagueness of the language (what constitutes "vilification"?) and the prospect of more court battles would prevent tobacco companies from challenging hard-hitting ads. But in February, the American Legacy Foundation pulled two ads from its upcoming 48-ad campaign because industry lawyers and North Carolina's attorney general said they could "be fairly viewed as personally attacking or vilifying the tobacco companies." One of the ads showed the Philip Morris headquarters surrounded by hundreds of body bags. The other had an actor walking into the building with a suitcase labeled "lie detector." &#13;</p>
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As usual, the tobacco companies have the resources and the will to fight these battles; the public-interest groups don't. Once again, the tobacco industry managed to achieve a measure of control over all aspects of a program intended to control it. That wasn't how the biggest antismoking campaign in history was supposed to work.&#13;</p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:04:08 +0000140769 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerCarolina's Company: The Slave Legacy Controversy in New Englandhttp://prospect.org/article/carolinas-company-slave-legacy-controversy-new-england
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George W. Bush and John McCain may be counting down the days until the South Carolina primary, relieved that soon reporters will quit pestering them about that Confederate flag-flying issue. But this could just be the beginning. Rhode Island's primary is coming up March 7. Or shall we say Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' primary?&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>This tiny state's real name has launched New England's own slave legacy controversy. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations gets its moniker from the days when Roger Williams was still alive and a plantation was any farm or settlement -- not necessarily a pastoral prison for slaves. But in solidarity with the recent movement to get the Confederate flag removed from the South Carolina Statehouse, Reverend Virgil Wood of the Ministers' Alliance of Rhode Island is trying to officially change Rhode Island's name to "Rhode Island." For Reverend Wood, "plantation" is now more <i>Gone With the Wind</i> than "Mayflower Compact" -- a hopelessly loaded term that just doesn't belong.&#13;<br />
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Should Rhode Island and Providence Plantations change its name to Rhode Island?&#13;<br /><br />&#13;<br /><a href="http://www.prospect.org/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6b3f6">Discuss it in the Online Forums</a>.&#13;
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&#13;<br /></p><p>Rhode Island's newspaper of record, the <i>Providence Journal</i>, wants to keep the name the way it is and accuses Reverend Wood of being ignorant of history. The paper's editorial on the topic hoped to end the controversy:&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>"In Rhode Island, the word plantation never denoted slavery. The slave trade was important to the later colonial economy of Rhode Island, but slavery itself never was essential to farming here, or comparable to its institutionalization in the South Some farms may have had a couple dozen slaves, but here the word plantation indicated not a slave economy but a farm or settlement. To eradicate the word because of later associations in another part of the country makes no sense. It panders to outright ignorance of history."&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>But, according to a recent book by former Brown University Professor Joanne Pope Melish, <i>Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860</i> (which was reviewed in the <i>Providence</i> (Plantations?) <i>Journal</i>), it is the paper's editorial board that is in fact guilty of "ignorance of history."&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>Its ignorance is not unexpected. In the Preface to <i>Disowning Slavery</i>, Professor Melish highlights "a virtual amnesia about slavery in New England" that is "almost as old as slavery itself." In fact, there was slavery in New England -- in Connecticut and Rhode Island (and Providence Plantations) in particular. &#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>The first black slaves in New England came from the West Indies in 1638, in exchange for American Indians captured in the Pequot War. At New England slavery's peak, around 1760, roughly one in four families owned slaves. Rhode Island's Narragansett Country, where most of the plantations were, was one quarter black in 1755. Melish argues -- as most historians and newspaper editors of New England do not (perhaps part of their amnesia) -- that New England's economy was dependent on slave labor.&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>But as the Revolution developed, the growing opposition to England's virtual enslavement of Americans necessarily fostered an examination of African slavery. Slaveholding became immoral, not because of what it did to blacks, but because of what it did to whites: murder their republican idyll with the deadly sin of dependence. Abolitionists didn't want former slaves to be citizens and didn't believe they could be (tainted as they were by their enslavement); they just wanted a virtuous free society. And they wished the cancerous institution of slavery -- and the slaves themselves -- would just go away.&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>Of course, this vision of the future presented New Englanders with a contradiction that was utterly irreconcilable: If they freed the slaves, they would be left with freed slaves, who were as much of a problem as slavery.&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>So abolitionists came up with schemes for gradual emancipation, whereby communities could maintain control over slaves and former slaves for the foreseeable future. In Rhode Island, children born to slaves after March 1, 1784 were to be freed upon reaching adulthood. But gradual emancipation only put off the problem. When a significant community of free blacks finally developed in New England, "white New Englanders had to cope with the problem of 'free blacks,'" according to Melish. So they started ascribing their degradation not to slavery (as they once had) but to "race." Former slaves couldn't be citizens not because they used to be slaves, but because they were "Negro."&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>Thus the roots of modern-day racism sprouted. Melish documents this beginning with the story of Lemuel Haynes. Haynes was an indentured servant who became the first ordained black minister in America in 1785 and the head of a white Congregational parish in Vermont three years later. He was able to participate in white society because he came of age shortly after the start of gradual emancipation, at a time when white New Englanders were still unsure of how to solve the paradox of free blacks. But by 1818, when Haynes had served his parish for 30 years, white New Englanders had developed a new theory of inherent black inferiority, and Lemuel Haynes was fired.&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>Decades passed and New Englanders discovered all sorts of ways to keep blacks out of their society. As the Civil War approached and the North was trying to define itself apart from the South, New England collectively decided to erase blacks and slavery from its history entirely. New England --and the North -- became a free society based on liberty and order. The South became despotic and licentious. Melish argues that this understanding of the coming conflict gave rise to "the myth of a historically-free, white New England" distinct from a "'Negroized'" South.&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p><i>Disowning Slavery</i> is about the long process of marginalizing the free blacks that emancipation unleashed in New England. And indeed that process continues. The notion that New England was innocent of the crime of slavery is still peddled in the <i>Providence Journal</i> and elsewhere. It is also still used to define the often-false difference between the North and the South. &#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>In its defensive editorial, the <i>Providence Journal</i> explains that unlike "Plantations," the Confederate flag's "link to slavery is strong and real, and its use as a statement of white power and anti-integration has a long and offensive history." The implication is that racism is today, as ever, a problem of the South and not of New England. By denying that slavery and racism ever existed in their communities, New Englanders deny that it exists today. As George Orwell said, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."&#13;<br />
&#13;<br /></p><p>The relatively academic question of whether Rhode Island's name ought to be changed to Rhode Island is one for historians that will be answered instead by politicians. But the response of the <i>Providence Journal</i> and others to the very idea of changing it is a much more vexing problem. Because there is ignorance of history, and then there is ignorance of ignorance of history. Candidates take heed. </p>
</div></div></div>Sat, 08 Dec 2001 00:51:52 +0000139221 at http://prospect.orgJeremy DerfnerJustice Brennan Prevailshttp://prospect.org/article/justice-brennan-prevails
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<p>Frank I. Michelman is a political theorist with a problem. He believes in democracy-all the people deciding for themselves how they will be governed. He also believes in the Consti tution, a 200-year-old document that sets down the fundamental rules of governance, "a law of law making," as Michelman puts it. But how can he believe in both? How can he reconcile "the paradox of constitutional democracy," whereby a democratic society puts so much faith in its foundational principles, which are for the most part removed from the democratic political process? To compound his problem, Michelman also has boundless respect for former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who for 30 years brought his moral sensibili ties to bear on the Constitution and came to personify the "activist" judge. Now Michelman's democracy is bound by what one man says about one document that nobody alive today has had any part in drafting. All of which leads Michel man to the central question of his book: "Brennan and democracy-how to have both?"&#13;<br />
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Michelman, who served as Brennan's clerk during the 1961-- 62 term of the Supreme Court and is now a pro fessor at Harvard Law School, deals with the theoretical conundrum in the first chapter of his extended essay and with Brennan himself in the second. To frame the discussion of how demo cracy is or is not carried out in our society, Michelman draws upon two leading constitutional scholars, Ronald Dworkin of the "democracy-as-rights" school and Robert Post of the "democracy-as-procedure" school. Dworkin argues that the laws governing a society can have some intrinsic democratic character, no matter who came up with them, how, or why. Laws upholding far-reaching enfranchisement are by nature democratic laws, in Dworkin's view. Post maintains that democracy is alive and well in a public discourse that seeps into the conduct of those who govern, a discourse that ideally would be equally available to all Americans. Michelman picks apart both Dworkin and Post (not before using their ideas to advance a productive discussion of his problem) and eventually gives his own answer. It is an honest one if somewhat unsatisfying: Michelman believes that the paradox will always exist no matter how hard we try to will it away. But our struggling with constitutional democracy will prove to us that if it is a less than perfect system, it is the best one we have. Some paradoxes are just paradoxes. &#13;<br />
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The second chapter of Bren nan and Democracy takes up Brennan's judicial philosophy in some detail. Michelman examines several landmark decisions (Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Cruzan v. Direc tor, Missouri Department of Health) and tries to place Brennan on the heavily traveled continuum anchored at one end by individual rights and at the other by community rights. Michelman concludes that Brennan believed absolutely in the dignity of individual human beings and in the power of the government to make itself an activist on behalf of individual liberty-again, that paradox. The book ends on a personal note as the author recounts a Justice Brennan anecdote. Michelman's admiration for Brennan shines throughout the book and even humanizes the constitutional theory from time to time. &#13;<br />
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One reviewer wrote that Michelman went about his writing with "mischief" and "an unpretentious prose style." Attributing mischief to Michelman might be going too far, but the book can be funny, especially if you delve into the extensive footnotes. And the style is straightforward-which is not to say it is an easy read. This is a theoretical book. But if you can summon both the intellectual fortitude and the inclination to start from square one and grapple with fundamental flaws in a system we tend to work rather happily in, then Brennan and Democracy is good exercise.&#13;<br />
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</div></div></div>Wed, 14 Nov 2001 22:08:39 +0000140782 at http://prospect.orgJeremy Derfner